Friday, December 16, 2005

I thought I'd give you and your readers a quick update on the 'Beefeater' video. As you are aware, Maple Creative developed (and I starred as the Beefeater) the Beefeater in order to drive traffic to the Unique British Gifts site (www.uniquebritishgifts.com). The spot which if you haven’t seen it is at http://www.maplecreative.com/client/UBG/uniquebritishgiftsthisholiday.mov was filmed in one day only two days before Thanksgiving. It was edited over Thanksgiving weekend and released on November 30th. Since that time, the worldwide response has been remarkable.

- Visitor numbers continue to rise - 92% of hits are entry via URL direct-Average pages/visitor: 5.5- 52% of home page entries click on past home page - 16.4% of visitors put UBG in Favorites- 74% of visitors are from the U.S.And most important to our client, U.S. sales have begun and continue.

But why? Could it be simply the result of the video? Certainly not!

To quote my colleague Skip “A marketing plan should never be built around a single tactic or a single medium. This goes back to one of our fundamental laws of marketing: if your marketing plan has only one component, it is sure to fail.”

Layer, Layer, Layer!

The campaign did not rely solely on the ‘Beefeater’ video. Another layer of the campaign was traditional media outreach. Before the release of the spot, we received coverage from local and regional media. After the release of the video we continued in our media outreach and forwarded the link to the spot to the media who hadn’t yet seen it – in a few cases we were contacted by the media directly after they viewed the spot. The video, targeted releases and good old media pitch garnered additional coverage in major markets including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Washington, D.C.

Additionally, the 'Beefeater' made stops in major markets greeting morning and afternoon commuters with a call to action - go to this site this holiday, appeared on talk radio in metropolitan markets. The day after greeting commuters in Pittsburgh (it was 15 degrees out) visits to the site were 30 percent above the previous all-time high the week before.

We are now gearing up to cross the bridge from mass marketing to direct marketing as we look to reach the bridal market.

What lies ahead for the ‘Beefeater’ and Unique British Gifts? Stay tuned.